Big Ten Universities are members of the nation's only conference whose constituency is entirely composed of institutions that are members of the AAU, a prestigious association of major academic and research institutions in the United States and Canada. The 11 Big Ten institutions are also members of the CIC.

The Big Ten leads all conferences with the highest number of ranked graduate school programs (top 25 rankings as compiled by US News and World Report 2010). This includes Law Schools, Medical Schools (Research and Primary Care), Business Schools, and Engineering Programs. The Big Ten has a total of 24 top 25 programs, followed by the Ivy League (22), Pac-10 (17), ACC (11), Big 12 (9), Big East (5) and SEC (2).

Based on the most recent federal graduation rate average for 1999-2002 freshman classes, Big Ten student-athletes graduated at 70.6 percent as compared with the average for all D-I student-athletes of 64 percent. In addition, the Big Ten's latest Graduation Success Rate is 82 percent compared to the D-I average of 79 percent.

The Big Ten leads all conferences with 4.4 million living alumni from its 11 institutions. Undergraduate enrollment for Big Ten institutions totals over 300,000, the most of any other conference.

For the 2008 fiscal year, federally funded research and development expenditures for Big Ten universities totaled over $3.45 billion. The Big Ten ranked second behind only the Pac-10 ($3.67 billion) and ahead of the Ivy League ($2.40 billion), ACC ($2.33 billion), Big 12 ($1.69 billion), Big East ($1.47 billion) and SEC ($1.47 billion). Big Ten universities averaged over $313.7 million per school, joining the Pac-10 ($366.9 million) and Ivy League ($300.2 million) as the only conferences to average more than $200 million per institution.

Based on the US Census projected population for 2010, the eight-state Big Ten region accounts for 68,056,353 people, which ranks second only to the Big East (108,228,906 in 13 states) and ahead of the ACC (63,197,954 in seven), SEC (58,838,904 in nine), Pac-10 (55,037,474 in four) and Big 12 (46,578,410 in seven).

Big Ten student-athletes receive more than $112 million annually in direct financial aid.

In 2008-09, the Big Ten featured 8,733 student-athletes on 275 teams (4,511 male and 4,222 female - a ratio of 52%-48%). In 2007-08, the Big Ten boasted 8,636 student-athletes, which ranked second to the Big East (9,865) and ahead of the Ivy (8,170), ACC (7,840), Big 12 (7,346), Pac-10 (6,946) and SEC (6,220).

Since 1992, the Big Ten increased opportunities for women in sports by establishing a multi-phased gender equity program. In that time, the Big Ten has created more than 2,000 new opportunities for women and established 28 new teams. In 2010-11 the Big Ten Network will commit to "Event Equality" for men's and women's events - a commitment to annually produce and distribute a substantially similar number of men's and women's events across all Big Ten Network controlled platforms. It will be the first national network to commit to event equality.

In 2006, the Big Ten created the first national conference-owned television network devoted to the athletic and academic programs of a single conference. The Big Ten Network is now available to more than 75 million homes nationally through agreements with more than 300 affiliates and is in 19 of the nation's top 20 markets.

The Big Ten's media agreements with CBS Sports, ABC/ESPN, the Big Ten Network and CBS College Sports Network provide the conference with its greatest television exposure ever.